NEW DELHI: The transformative and ambitious ‘Digital India’ programme of the Government of India has started bearing fruits after six months of its inception and e-services have begun to pick up momentum and reaching the bottom of the pyramid, which is digitally empowering the people of the country.
Making this claim, Communications and Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today that the governments at the Central and state levels, industry and academia need to work in tandem to accelerate the pace of digitisation.
He was addressing the second edition of the international conference ‘i-Bharat’ organised by FICCI in partnership with the Department of Electronics & IT (DeitY) of the Ministry.
Highlighting the progress of Digital India, Prasad said more than 12,000 rural post office branches had been linked digitally and soon payment banking would also become a reality for the post offices. As part of Digital India, the government had also planned to make Digital Village across the country by linking all schemes with technology. The digital village would be powered by LED lighting, solar energy, skill development centres, e-services like e-education and e-health. To make this programme a success, District Collectors will have to play an important role.
Speaking about e-Taal, Prasad said the web portal disseminates real time statistics of the e-transactions taking place at the national and state level e-Governance Projects. He added that the National e-Governance Plan of the Government sought to provide impetus for long-term growth of e-Governance within the country.
On promoting electronic manufacturing in India, Prasad said the progressive policies and aggressive focus on ‘Make in India’ initiative have played a significant part in the resurgence of the electronics manufacturing sector. Investment in the electronics manufacturing has increased, giving a quantum jump to the sector.
Elaborating on the headway made in connecting gram panchayats of the country with the optical fibre network, Prasad said 18 states were on board and the work was on at a rapid pace. To script a success story with ‘Digital India,’ the government and industry had to look for innovative ways to expedite the process of connecting India digitally, he added.
FICCI President Harshavardhan Neotia said the Government has embarked on a reforms programme focused on making India an easy place to do business. The emphasis has been on simplification and rationalisation of the existing rules and introduction of information technology to make governance more efficient and effective. Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and Mobile number (JAM) trinity is acting as a game changing reform that is allowing transfer of benefits in a leakage-proof, well-targeted and cashless manner.
FICCI-IT Committee chairperson Debjani Ghosh said technology was changing the world and its transformative powers were evidently visible in India. New technologies were deeply impacting governance, society, and security and this year’s i-Bharat conference aimed to bring together leaders from all segments of industry and government to explore and demystify the complex technology trends and reach at solutions and execution techniques of the programs to connect India digitally. She added that the government and industry needed to figure out new solutions to speed up the process of making India digital.
